Something we’ve all got to do with alarming and depressing regularity.

So, let’s make it exciting.

What is it that’s being washed? Why? What’s on it that needs to be washed off? How did it get mucky? How important is it that it gets washed?

Who’s washing it? Why are they washing it? Are they doing it by hand, in the sink? In a washer at home?

Or is it in someone else’s home? If it is, why?

In a laundrette? Who else is there? What’s the gossip? Does anything go wrong with the machine? Do two characters’ eyes meet across a crowded tumble dryer?

Is it in a commercial laundry? What are they washing, and who for? Are they doing a hotel’s laundry, or a prison’s, or a hospital’s? Do things come in with the laundry that really shouldn’t… or do odd things go out with the clean laundry back to wherever? 

Is it the arrival of a new washer? Ooh, the excitement! Oh, the bind of having to plumb the thing in!

You could take it back into history – about a hundred years ago, my grandma used to take in washing to earn money.

Or, further back: in many cultures, laundry was seen as ‘women’s work’, so the village wash-house (lavoir) acted as a space for women to gather and talk together as they washed clothes. And what did they use to whiten the clothes? Urine. The ammonia in urine helps to whiten whites.

Or even further back – washing clothes in the river.

Or you could make it little scene, a little vignette – someone who’s staring into the washer as it’s going around, or someone who’s hanging out the washing in the garden, but they’re thinking about something completely different. What are they thinking about?

What about the noise of a washer lulling a baby off to sleep? Google it. It’s a thing.

And, of course – there’s money laundering, something London’s very good at, apparently.